Los Alamos County employees Angelica Gurule, left, and Eloise Schappert fill balloons for a display Thursday at SALA Los Alamos Event Center next to a replica of Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki, Japan, to end World War II.
Todd Nichols, executive director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, shows a picture Tuesday of J. Robert Oppenheimer at the house he lived in during the Manhattan Project.
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, credited with contributing to the development of the atomic bomb, at his home in Berkeley, Calif., April 23, 1946. He resumed his teaching at University of California in the fall of 1946.
Todd Nickols, executive director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, walks through J. Robert Oppenheimer’s office Tuesday in the house where he lived during the Manhattan Project.
Los Alamos County employees Angelica Gurule, left, and Eloise Schappert fill balloons for a display Thursday at SALA Los Alamos Event Center next to a replica of Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki, Japan, to end World War II.
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, credited with contributing to the development of the atomic bomb, at his home in Berkeley, Calif., April 23, 1946. He resumed his teaching at University of California in the fall of 1946.
Clarence Hamm/Associated Press file photo
Todd Nickols, executive director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, walks through J. Robert Oppenheimer’s office Tuesday in the house where he lived during the Manhattan Project.
LOS ALAMOS — Los Alamos has been a place of discovery, of town of secrets and a launchpad of political and moral debate for the past 78 years.
But never until this weekend has it been aglow in the refracted spotlight of Hollywood. That reality came home this week in a place where past, present and future mix in both thrilling and unsettling ways.
As she kept a watchful eye on the playful tykes taking part in a summer art camp, arts educator Becky Herroon took a moment to consider this weekend’s opening of Oppenheimer, the much-anticipated epic about the physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb on an otherwise anonymous New Mexico mesa — an accomplishment (and for some, an indictment) that fascinates and troubles the world to this day.
Oppenheimer, she said, “explains what it was like then, but people want to experience the town now.”
A few moments later she added: “We don’t want to be forgotten, but we also don’t want to be left in the past.”
The gulf between the 1940s and the 2020s seemed to narrow this week as Los Alamos prepared for its star turn. Other events and displays try to explain more about the pioneers of what would become Los Alamos National Laboratory, where Oppenheimer and his team of scientists, technicians and support personnel created the device that would end World War II — but also open a terrifying window toward instantaneous death on a mass scale.
The center of attention in Los Alamos on Thursday afternoon was the SALA Los Alamos Event Center, once home to the Reel Deal Theater, where a large replica of the atomic bomb was being set up to remind patrons of the explosive nature of the movie’s release.
The SALA planned to preview the film Thursday night.
Allan Saenz, co-owner of SALA Los Alamos Event Center, takes a look at one of the exhibits Tuesday for the premiere of the Oppenheimer movie.
Alan Saenz, who co-owns SALA, said in an interview he plans 10 days of atomic bomb-related movies, talks about the device’s history and impact, and a multiple-projector display of video, photos and other images chronicling the life and times of Oppenheimer.
He said he hopes the film shines renewed light on the man, not just the scientist.
“We’re trying to show the human side of Oppenheimer, the weight he carried building a bomb that he knew would be used by humans to destroy themselves,” Saenz said in an interview.
“I hope that brings about some discussion, and one discussion we will have is, ‘Was it necessary to drop the bomb?’ ” he said.
Elsewhere in town, posters from the film hung in many a storefront window and local business folk were eager to talk about the film’s impact on Los Alamos today. David Jolly, general manager of the locally-owned Metzgers Hardware store on Central Avenue, noted the store, which opened in 1947, is almost as old as the Manhattan Project.
He said people are talking about the film “all over the place.” While some people may worry about the historical accuracy of Oppenheimer, he said “it’s not a technical documentary. It’s not ‘our’ story, whoever we are now.”
Not far away, Doug Osborn, who managers Bathtub Row Brewing Co-Op — which offers a Hoppenheimer IPA for $7 — said a lot of people from out of town come into the brewery after hiking, skiing or visiting museums.
Some know the history of Los Alamos dating back to the war years, and some do not, he said.
The film is “an exciting thing” for the town, Osborn noted, in large part because Los Alamos has expanded many times since the days when Oppenheimer worked in secret on the hill, often getting there through a secret doorway in downtown Santa Fe.
Los Alamos’ Chamber of Commerce was awash in Oppenheimer-related paraphernalia. Los Alamos Commerce & Development Corp. Executive Director Lauren McDaniel said she thinks the film “will bring renewed attention to why Los Alamos is important in our country’s history.”
While Oppenheimer’s legacy is rooted in his role in the creation of the atomic bomb, she also noted the scientist’s life “is much more than that, and Los Alamos is much more than that.”
Right now, the film is generating enough publicity to draw more visitors to the city, where the house Oppenheimer and his family lived in during the 1940s still stands.
Walking through the old Oppenheimer house — now closed to the public — with a martini glass full of Coca-Cola in his hand, Todd Nichols, executive director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, said he thinks the movie will take people back to a time some people today may not fully understand.
Todd Nichols, executive director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, shows a picture Tuesday of J. Robert Oppenheimer at the house he lived in during the Manhattan Project.
Though the U.S. has gone through a number of conflicts since World War II, Nichols noted the realities of World War II were unique, and with the passage of time, often forgotten.
“We are some steps away from understanding the fear of Nazis” that drove Oppenheimer and his colleagues to outpace the Germans in developing the bomb, he said.
The film, which details the events leading up to the detonation of the bomb, including the decision to build a secret site at Los Alamos, makes that race-against-time tension clear.
“This is a national emergency,” actor Cillian Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer in the film, says in a scene from the film’s trailer. “We’re in a race against the Nazis. And I know what it means if the Nazis have the bomb.”
“I think it’s going to show a lot of people the science and the horror of the time,” Nichols said of the film, adding he believes Oppenheimer’s quest was “about saving lives and ending a war that was horrific.”
The Manhattan Project product stamp on the house where J. Robert Oppenheimer lived during the Manhattan Project.
The Oppenheimer house, once a center for social events and parties, is full of furniture and other items used in the film — Universal Pictures donated them to the historical society, which helped with research and other support during the production— and gives a feel for the place and time in which Oppenheimer and his peers lived and worked.
Nichols called the film “the story of the town itself, built because of the Manhattan Project.”
Nearby, dozens of children played in the yard in and around Fuller Lodge, once a center of activity for Manhattan Project workers and now home to the historical society’s offices. Some children set up picnic blankets beneath a pair of statues depicting Oppenheimer and U.S. Army Gen. Leslie Groves, in charge of building and overseeing the Manhattan Project infrastructure. The two men were the protagonists of an earlier film, 1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy, that didn’t create the buzz of Oppenheimer.
If Oppenheimer was the hero of the day after the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II without U.S. troops having to invade the Japanese home islands, his final years were dripped in controversy. He spoke out against the development of the hydrogen bomb as the Cold War and red scare merged in the 1950s, even losing his security clearance as his enemies worked to discredit his viewpoint. Only last year, 45 years after his death, did the U.S. Department of Energy — long the overseer of the lab Oppenheimer built — revoke the decision.
Revisiting his life — Oppenheimer died of cancer in 1967 — and the uncertain messages of his work, is worth the time, some said, even if it renews once again the mixed feelings of accomplishment and fear.
“We need to go back and have a little bit more memory of our history,” said one visitor, moving from one Los Alamos museum to another in search of that history. “It’s fascinating to see where it [history] lived, where it was experienced.”
